Exercise: An examination of dose-response relationships for women aged 65-74 yr.

Funded Activity Summary

The increasing number of older women in Australia presents a significant challenge to our health system. Preventative and health promotion strategies must be developed for this important group of Australian's if chronic disease and disability are to be contained and the decline in functional capacity attenuated. One potential intervention strategy is regular exercise. However, if exercise is to have multi-systems benefits, the dose of the exercise must be known. We do not know the exercise prescription that will maximize those health benefits required for this group of Australian's. We propose to resolve this situation via two related experiments involving women aged 65-74 yr. Experiment 1 will select moderate-intensity treadmill walking for 30 min-session with the weekly exercise frequency varied from 1 to 5 session-wk for 64 sessions. Experiment 2 will also select moderate-intensity treadmill walking with the total exercise time per week (120 min-wk) and the number of weeks of training (24 wk) fixed but varying the exercise duration per session (24 to 120 min-session) and the exercise frequency per week; 5 (x 24 min) to 1 (x 120 min) session-wk. Each subject will undergo lung function tests, body fat test, fitness tests and blood tests at selected time intervals throughout each experiment. A separate fitness test will be conducted on the subjects' leg muscle to help us understand what is happening directly in the muscle. We will also conduct a tilt test to help us understand how regular exercise might lessen the likelihood of 'falls' in older individuals. We expect to determine the optimum exercise prescription to improve health and minimize injury and misadventure. It is essential that GP's who have the main responsibility for prescribing exercise for their older patients, have access to knowledge on the optimum exercise prescription to maximize the beneficial changes in health and functional capacity in females aged 65-74 yr.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2007

End Date: 01-01-2008

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $696,249.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Primary Health Care

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

Ageing | Cardiovascular and other Disease Prevention | Exericse Training | Older Persons and Functional Decline | Physical Activity | Primary Health Care | Public Health | Quality of Life | Women's Health

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